


Wafers and Fish Sticks

by canadino



Category: One Piece
Genre: M/M, Preschool AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 19:14:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6718048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canadino/pseuds/canadino
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To be the cook of a preschool is no easy task.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wafers and Fish Sticks

The economy was really going to hell if someone as attractive and talented as he was, who graduated pretty much top of his class - third if anyone was counting - from Zeff’s Cooking George Culinary Institute, was left floundering for a job and settling for being the under-appreciated cook for a local preschool. In a way, it was a good thing Sanji took on this position, after a steamy conversation with the female superintendent (“Mr. Vinsmoke, I hardly think my preference in cuisines is relevant considering you would be in charge of food preparation for the children, so please stay focused and stop asking.”), because the previous cook in charge of the tiny little kitchen pressed in a sunny Northern nook of the preschool had been stuffing the freezer with frozen, reheatable food. It was for the good of the children and the sake of his sensibilities he approached the superintendent again and demanded the right and funds to stock the pantry with healthier, more workable options. She said afterwards it was good to see him passionate about his position and she felt more confident in her decision to hire him. She also said she was not free for dinner and would probably never be. 

In all honesty, Sanji was not the biggest fan nor the best with children, having gone through most of his adult life under the impression he would be cooking and crafting for the fine upper stratosphere of the social ladder with glittery diamond cufflinks and earrings and multiple orders of the finest wine to go with the most exquisite cuts of beef, but he stayed in the kitchen for most of the time so it was fine. The biggest perk, after all, was seeing the sophisticated and beautiful Robin Nico, the teacher in charge of the Casablanca Class who was always so in control of her class of three and four-year-olds that it seemed like she had multiple arms and legs to make sure everything ran smoothly in her room. Even for a childcare worker, her hair was raven black and well kept, her choices in outfits flattering and tasteful, her melodic voice as she read stories to the children, and - 

“If you want to practice your monologues, go work in a theater company instead.”   


And then there was Zoro, who demanded his class never call him ‘Mr. Roronoa’ because it made him feel stuffy and old and led the Thistle Class with an earnest fervor that the mothers of the children seemed to like and admire. They liked him because he was no nonsense with the children and taught them how to improve themselves, even if they came home reciting things like ‘Focus your mind and body’ and ‘Just ten sit-ups a day won’t cut it’. What the mothers and fathers didn’t know was the way Zoro slept in the employee room during recess and snored loud enough to wake the dead, how he always drank the most and held his liquor during the rare afterwork happy hour outings, and how he was downright petty and teasing toward the school’s cook, arguably the most important position in the employee roster. “If you’ve got time to squawk and babble this early, then go make that coffee that tastes just okay.”

“Everyone loves my coffee,” Sanji huffed, a little embarrassed that someone had actually caught him crooning about Robin under his breath, but it was true. Even Franky, the Anemone Class SUPER leader (self-appointed), who preferred to drink cola agreed. For someone who claimed the coffee and snacks he made were ‘barely passable’, Zoro seemed to eat the most of them. “Mind your own business, anyway. Don’t breathe a word of this to Robin. She can’t know I don’t compose my serenades for her ahead of time as if I can’t come up with odes to her beauty on the spot.”  


“Don’t bother,” Zoro said, taking off his jacket and putting on the assigned teacher’s smock, pale green for his class that matched his eyes disgusting well (white worked the best for a chef, in other news, and that spotless color made his hair even more golden, also). “You don’t have a chance with her, so just give up.”  


“What do you know?” Sanji put a hand to his mouth in mock horror. “Don’t tell me you’re also aiming for her and think you have a better chance than me? Just because you see her more often? You think your gruff attitude is attractive to a lovely lady of her stature? You’re more arrogant than I thought!”  


“You’re right; a foul-mouthed playboy idiot with world-class training who only is good enough to cook for a school of children with undeveloped palates is more of her league. My bad.”  


The staff room was not quite big enough to accommodate a full on fist fight, so Brooke’s timely entrance saved the little room from further mess. “Zoro!” he sang, his voice warbling but in tune. “You’re here early! Usually you’re the last one to arrive before the children! Did you get a bad night’s sleep? Me, I slept like the dead!” He laughed at his own joke, like usual, made at his own expense; he was the eldest teacher and it showed through his gaunt features despite his energy and enthusiasm. He was officially in charge of the Rose Class, but he taught music to whole preschool so his students were often fitted into the other classes when he did his rounds. He turned to Sanji. “I’d like some tea now, if you don’t mind, with the coffee.”

“I’m not a busboy!”  


“Sometimes I get up early,” Zoro said. “I always do, for my morning jog. I usually take a quick nap in my car afterwards so that’s why I’m late, but I felt awake today so I’m here now.” He gave Sanji a smug look. “I’m very efficient with my time, unlike some budding Shakespearian thespian in the wrong profession.”   


Sanji bristled, though the jab went right over Brooke’s head. “I love Shakespeare,” Brooke said. “He and I are very much alike! We’re both dead bards! Hah!”

“Please don’t speak so ill of yourself,” Robin said as she came into the staff room with Franky right behind her. “You really will talk your way into an early grave. As they say: speak it into existence. (“Is that true?” Franky asked, with genuine terror in his voice.) Ah, the tea isn’t ready, Sanji? I was so looking forward to my first cup this morning; I had quite the frazzled night planning how I would speak to the children about the importance of journaling and preserving one’s story.”

The indignation flew from the pit of Sanji’s stomach right up to his chest, now puffed out, and he chirped in a voice several octaves higher than his normal speaking voice, “Of course, Miss Robin! Right away, if you don’t mind!” He dashed off to the kitchen to get the hot water on the stove and gingerly handle Robin’s precious tea strainer and her pot of loose-leaf rose black tea. They were on a shelf of their own, separated from Zoro’s energy bars and Brooke’s antiquated-looking tea bags. Zoro’s confidence in declaring that he had no chance with Robin was troubling him, though. It was different from the usual way Zoro chose his insults to get under his skin - it was as if it were fact, just a simple thing like the world spinning on its axis and the rise and fall of tides. Sanji would get to the bottom of this. But first, coffee.

[=]

His slow-cooked, glazed carrots were very well received by the children overall, and Sanji was pretty sure he was the savior and the one called on by the Ones most high to get children to eat their vegetables. The dishes had been returned mostly clean, and as he soaked them in soapy water to make cleaning easier, he tried not to think about the highest praise he’d gotten, from a disgruntled mother who complained that her son was picking at his food and not eating it up as before. That boy had seen better and now food from Earth was not enough. The children got about an hour of free time after lunch, after which came nap time to counter the sleepiness after the meal after digestion, after that which came snack time. For a bunch of young, young children, their days were blocked and scheduled. Sanji had the platter of homemade wafers at the ready, and he figured he’d bring some along with her second cup of tea to Robin; once the children woke up from their nap, things would get too hectic for her to settle down and tuck in. 

When he visited the Casablanca class, all the children had already been tucked in and sleeping away, with the exception of one or two still wide-eyed but quietly lying still. This was unusual for Robin to leave her class unattended - it struck him that perhaps something had happened for her to do something so uncharacteristic, an emergency! Taking pains to set down her plate of wafers and a cup of steaming black tea as quietly as possible on her desk, Sanji roamed the halls, ears perked to hear a womanly cry for help, a signal for him to burst in heroically and fend off whatever monster had captured Robin and held her against her will. 

But there was no such monster, for he found her in the Anemone Classroom, talking quietly to a girl who was sitting on the ground and refusing to get into her cot. Franky was watching them at a distance, frowning in the way Sanji knew must have gotten the girl even more agitated. He recognized the little girl as a new student, and she must not have wanted to settle in and nap in such a new environment. Franky was loud and pushy; he needed someone reasonable and composed like Robin to get through to the girl, who was now gazing up at Robin like she was her own role model and she began obediently lying down in her cot, clutching a picture book with the promise that if she was not too sleepy, she could read to pass the time. 

That was just the very reason Sanji liked Robin, so classy and so good at what she did. He would promise her some dark chocolate mousse for her efforts, which he would whip up immediately after he told her so, after more praise for her tact and way with words. He started with one foot toward the door as Franky and Robin were starting to walk toward it, but the way Franky was looking at her, all soft-like and completely new to Sanji made him stop and backtrack behind the corner, as if he were intruding. 

“Thanks for that,” Franky said when they reached the doorway, far enough from the kids so they could speak in hushed tones. “I don’t think I could have gotten her to get to bed like that. I think she’s scared of me. I’m so much bigger than she is.”  


“She’ll learn in time,” Robin assured him. They were standing so close to each other, Sanji thought. They weren’t speaking that quietly that they needed to do that, because he could hear them quite fine even with the relative quiet of the building during nap time. “Your muscles aren’t for force and scaring. There’s strength in protecting.”   


Franky put an arm around her waist. Sanji screamed into his mouth, muffled shock. “Can I?” Franky asked, the least smiley and energetic Sanji had ever seen him.

“Quickly, if you’d like. I should be getting back to the Rose Class.” And Franky pressed a fast kiss to Robin’s mouth, and it wasn’t rejected or done in surprise. Robin had a hand on his chest, flat palmed and relaxed. It made sense now, why the two were often seen coming in together and leaving around the same time; it wasn’t just coincidence that they happened to have the same schedules. They sat next to each other in staff meetings. He always stepped in if an angry parent was getting louder and louder when speaking with her. She often mixed their classes together on field trips so they could do double duty watching over their collective. It all clicked and became instantly clear.   


He was being dramatic, he knew this; and yet he was going to let himself wallow in a dark funk in the foyer leading up to the classrooms and which veered off toward the kitchen. The sun was out and shining, how hateful. Of course a beautiful woman like Robin was happily spoken for. He would be more in shock in her taste of men but frankly (ugh) he didn’t really know what her taste was to begin with. Unlike Brooke, Robin did not readily volunteer information about herself or her likes or dislikes or what she liked to do outside of the preschool. He was being irrational, he wasn’t that invested, and yet it was healthy to feel emotions so strongly, so dammit, he was going to feel them. 

There was a movement out of the corner of his eye, and Sanji recognized Luffy, from Thistle Class, peeking out at him from the doorway. He knew the request even before Luffy looked around and left his classroom to come trotting up toward him. He was going to look Luffy in the eyes and tell him it wasn’t fair to the other children to have his snacks early and that in general, life wasn’t fair at all so there was no point trying to be optimistic about it. Luffy had a great big smile on his face, and it pained him really to think he would crush it, but it was only right to let children know early about the injustices around them -

“There you are. I thought I told you it was nap time.” Zoro scooped Luffy up right before Sanji could begin his speech about how from dust one came, to dust one would return. Luffy had the awareness to look ashamed at being caught. “Don’t run off now. You won’t have enough energy to make it through snack time if you don’t sleep now.”  


“I’m just a little hungry,” Luffy insisted. “I can’t sleep if I’m hungry.”  


“You had that great big lunch, didn’t you? You ate it all, right?”  


“Yep! It was really good!”  


Zoro was good with kids when he wanted to be. Damn him, he was just showing off now. “It’s always good, because Sanji makes them. And snack’s going to be good too. It’s going to taste even better after a nap.”

“Really?”  


“Duh. Doesn’t breakfast always taste good after you wake up?”  


“That’s true,” Luffy agreed. “Okay, I guess I can sleep then.” They went back to the Thistle Classroom and Sanji continued his mini pity party. Shortly after, Zoro came back out into the hallway and came up to him with an irritating smile on his face.  


“I told you, didn’t I?”  


Sanji put on his best murderous face, but Zoro laughed in the face of danger. “First of all, how do you know what I’m upset about? Maybe I broke some of the plates or screwed up a cooking experiment. Hell, maybe I got a call that I’ve been disowned. Don’t pretend you know me.”

“Please. We use plasticware and you’re too good to mess up anything you cook to the extent that you’d be so dramatically crushed about it. And if you were so close to your family, you’d have asked them to fund a restaurant endeavor or they would have given it to you anyway.” He was still smug, grinning and looking down at him. “Anyway, if you spent any time looking at anyone besides just her, you’d have known. It’s so obvious, I doubt Franky even knows what subtly means, which you should relate to.”  


Sanji waved him away. “It really shocks me to my core to know that you can be so nice to the kids when you’re actually a massive asshole.”

“You want me to be nice to you, huh?” He felt Zoro’s hand on his head, ruffling his hair, gentler than the times he roughhoused with him after staff meetings or during drinking matches at staff outings. “I’ll tell you what; just say the word and I’ll tuck you in at night and tell you good night and make you breakfast in bed, if you want.”   


“Ugh, don’t be condescending.”   


Zoro laughed. “Well, the offer’s always open.” Sanji felt his stomach drop for the second time in the day and he got up and scampered back to the kitchen, quickly before Zoro or anyone could see how he felt his face heat up. Any, any at all, admiration he would even consider holding for Zoro was just about the way he handled his class, never about the care Zoro tended to show whenever they stayed out too late after staff happy hours when everyone else had already gone home or how that one time Zoro had gotten even drunker than he had and Sanji had taken him home and wondered what it would be like waking up in that horrendously minimalist messy room. He’d only noticed that apron color-eye color correlation because he’d taken that one color theory class to see what color combinations looked good on dishes, in the first place. He was a professional; he could keep it together. 

“Here!” Sanji yelled, throwing the platter of wafers and the jug of milk at Zoro before running away.   


“Hey, Zoro,” Luffy said, casually reaching over to snatch a stick of wafer from Usopp’s unguarded plate. “Do you like snack time too?”  


Zoro refilled Luffy’s paper cup of milk. “Yeah. I love it.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Summaries are so hard to make, because I personally don't read the fics where the summary basically goes through every plot twist and is any longer than two sentences. The title comes from the foods I distinctly remember eating in preschool. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
